This invention concerns an improved system for the monitoring of air quality, particularly in the workplace, whether the workplace consists of one or more rooms or buildings, or even one or more plant sites, via the collection and use of data on airborne materials, particularly radioactive particulate materials such as dust or combustion emitted particles, typically referred to as aerosols, the system providing one or more facets of enhanced data accuracy, security, retrievability, and accountability of operating personnel through recorded chain of custody, or the like.
In industry, in particular, a great deal of effort is presently being directed to providing a working environment which is medically safe for employees. This effort is not limited to work areas subject to ambient (airborne) radioactivity, but encompasses ambient chemical contamination as well, including vaporous, gaseous and colloidal or other particulate chemical contaminants.
Especially troublesome to the monitoring of such contamination are the mechanics of ambient sampling, sample analysis and analytical data processing, particularly where many employees, workplaces and ambient samplings are involved. for example, where the monitoring system which is designed to provide reliable workplace data on individual employees in a readily available and prompt manner, involves 200 employees, 150 workplaces and three shifts per day, the ambient monitoring over a 24 hour period easily involves 12,000-20,000 or more workplace air sampling initiations and terminations. The occurrences therefore, of inadvertent sample mix-ups alone, not to mention intentional but misguided sample takings or handlings, or other error possibly introduced by the detection and counting equipment itself, is quite high.